<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>the ending is the same every damn time by CloudDreamer</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29563962">the ending is the same every damn time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer'>CloudDreamer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Blaseball (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>12x100, Background Character Death, College, Cryptid Esme Ramsey, Day X, F/F, Implied/Referenced Sex, Transgender Jessica Telephone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:00:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,794</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29563962</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Jessica Telephone, and the world will never forget that.</p><p>Her name is Esme Ramsey, and she's the only one who doesn't seem to care. </p><p>This fic is 12 scenes, (approximately) 100 words each, inspired by Lewis Atilio, and brought to Blaseball by @crookedsaint. Things got out of hand, length wise.</p><p>Title from Strange Love by Halsey</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jessica Telephone/Esme Ramsey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the ending is the same every damn time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1 </p><p>It is the first day of college. Nobody here knows your name yet, but they will. You write it on your hand, on your notebooks, on dozens of labels. You mark your territory with JESSICA TELEPHONE in bright red ink, as neat as you can. When the professor reads that name off roll call, you smile, put your hand up in the air, and say, “Here,” with a sort of pride that leaves you dizzy. And when he asks for volunteers, you’re the first to speak up. </p><p>He calls on you, says your name like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Everyone turns to look at you as you speak with a confidence that’s entirely learned, reading from the syllabus like it’s a declaration of war. Everyone except for the girl in the back corner, who seems entirely uninterested in you. When her name — Esme Ramsey — was read off the list, she didn’t make a sound. Just tilted her head in acknowledgment. </p><p> </p><p>2</p><p>You are in the same class as her twice in that first term. You never see her studying and when she speaks up in class, it’s always with the most dry tone possible. You’re not sure if she’s completely uninvested in everything around you or if she’s the funniest, most sarcastic person you’ve ever met. Not that you’ve really met Esme. Outside of those scared classes, she is an enigma. You attend as many clubs as you can fit into your cramped schedule, compare notes with your twin brother even though he doesn’t seem to care at all, and you do not see her. She is a ghost. </p><p> </p><p>3</p><p>It’s not like you care too much for this strange slip of a girl. You are at the top of every class, even though, from what you can see, she’s always right behind you. You have dozens of friends, a lover here and a lover there. You step into a party, and all eyes are on you. You step into a class, and all ears are yours. You could step in front of an army, and those soldiers would be yours to command. Except her, and that doesn’t mean anything. </p><p> </p><p>4</p><p>You do find her one day. In a computer lab, talking with someone from home. Dallas might be your home, but she’s not from around here. That much was obvious from the start, in all the little things. You hadn’t expected Moab. You hadn’t expected to see arches of brilliant orange and red rising from the earth through the window, behind one of apparently several fathers. You feel like a creep, watching her, even as you just came to talk to a teacher. Check in on your coding assignment. It wasn’t necessary. You know you understood it, but you wouldn’t be the best if you didn’t double check everything. So now you're here, trying not to gawk at the first answer to one of hundreds of questions she doesn’t want to admit she has about Esme Ramsey. </p><p>You stand there awkwardly for a good moment. You don't ask the teacher what you wanted to. </p><p>5</p><p>She comes back from winter vacation, and something is different about her. She’s as raw as ever, always perfectly poised, but there’s a depth to her voice that wasn’t there before. When she speaks in your class, she speaks with an authority she didn’t before, and she’s on the school’s blaseball team now. Apparently she’s been seen eating balls, according to the rumor mill. Someone in your shared class jokes about the end of the world in 2012. She says that it’ll be a while yet, and because it’s her, you don’t know how deep the sarcasm goes. But her eyes are dark, and she grips her chair with too much strength. You think you believe her. </p><p> </p><p>6</p><p>You nearly die once, on valentines day. One of the girls on campus sent you a box of cookies, and you hadn’t realized there were peanuts in them. You couldn’t find your epipen— you’d left it in the pocket of your other jacket, the one Seb had gotten you for the holidays not this one, the old letterman jacket from high school, shit, you can’t <i>breathe.</i> You’re sitting on a park bench, you can’t breathe, and you’re going to die here. You reach for your phone in your pocket, but your hands are shaking too badly to call… call who? </p><p>And then Esme’s there, epipen in hand— <i>your</i> epipen. It sinks into your arm and you can breathe again. You try to say thank you, but all you can force out is </p><p>“Why?”</p><p>And all she says before walking away is,“it's not your time to die.” </p><p> </p><p>7</p><p>You find her number in your phone later, under the initials ER and the emoji of a blue heart and with a photograph of a ram’s skull as the profile picture. You don’t know how it got there, but there’s a text waiting for you, dated to five minutes before you took a bite of that almost fateful cookie. She hadn’t noticed, somehow. It just says “peanuts.” You are an expert in girls by now. You’ve studied them as an academic interest, seen yourself in them in a moment of revaluation, and loved them with an unmatched passion and fervor. And she is an enigma. She is untouchable, above it all, and you want to bring her down to earth. An inane text. It makes you want to kiss her so hard she bleeds. </p><p>You think she's the prettiest person you've ever seen.</p><p> </p><p>8</p><p>You don’t write back for a week. </p><p>You try your best to ignore her in class, a text usually made easy by the infrequency of her additions, but something’s changed in her again. Her words come like a river now, explanations on the philosophy of art laced with unprecedented passion and detail. She’s so personal now, talking of famous artists like they’re old friends, and now she’s surrounded by a crowd. Now she’s got people by her side everywhere she goes, and you are left with whiplash. A box of pastries is left by your door, signed ER with a doodle of an anatomically correct heart in blue pen. They’re the best thing you’ve ever tasted, and you want more.</p><p> </p><p>9</p><p>She kisses you once, on the last day of your senior years. Once your thesis has been turned in, and there’s nothing left to lose. You became something like friends as sophomores, albeit friends who only ever texted and refused to respond to each other’s points in the few classes they’d been in together. You asked questions sometimes, and she’d answer them, to the extent that she wanted to and nothing further. She’d ask questions too sometimes, always starting from a foundation that was far too close for you to feel like your privacy hadn’t been invaded some time ago, but it only left you wanting her that much more. You didn’t think Esme felt the same way. You thought she saw all of you and found you wanting. At least, until that night. It starts with a kiss, and it ends with her gone from your bed the next morning, number gone from your phone and all evidence of her presence in your life erased.</p><p> </p><p>10</p><p>At least, until the return of blaseball, and you’re on the other side of the field. You’re half convinced it’s a fever dream, but after the game is over, she finds you in the locker room and kisses you hard, just like you like it. You close your eyes, try to keep from falling over in the resulting dizziness, and when you open them again, she’s gone. She’s always gone when you wake up, more of a memory than a tangible person even when her hands are in your hair. </p><p>She finds you after games, again and again, and when you ask her what happened, she tells you a dozen stories and asks you to pick which one is true. She smiles when she’s with you like the whole world is a joke, just like she smiles at everything, but when you’re together, you think you might be in on it. </p><p> </p><p>11</p><p>One night, she decides to stay. </p><p>She tells you the story of two girls out in the desert and the blood of a slain god. She speaks with the most emotion you’ve ever heard from her of the end of the world and her role in it. She admits she is a monster, and you tell her you aren’t afraid. She tells you you’re the hero of the story, and you drink all of her in. She lets you hold her this time, and you make a good thing together. </p><p>She whispers, "I love you," on your last night in Dallas, as if she knows what will happen next and if she says it too loud, she might invite the flame into your bedroom too. </p><p>But no. The fire only takes the star pitcher of the Seattle Garages. And it's not until the games that it starts to be more, more, more, and you are safe. You are safe as long as Esme’s willing to hold your hand. The memory of her words against your neck as she brought you back from the edge of oblivion echoes every time someone’s left in the dust. You know: This is not your time to die. </p><p>Even as Seb is gone, replaced by a mockery of your brother, you know. </p><p>Even as the red line descends and your world goes dark, you know.</p><p> </p><p>12</p><p>This is not your time to die is not a blessing. Her whisper was a warning. This is not your time to die. It is your time to live as everything good around you is burnt to a crisp. It is your time to live through a hundred broken hearts. </p><p>You wake to the crowd cheering your name. You wake to love and hate and the girl that knows you better than you know yourself. She watches you with love, pity, and terror, and it’s the first time you can read her face. It’s the first time you see the entirety of Esme Ramsey, and you are disgusted with her mortality and her monstrousness. You see the truth with a violent clarity. Her purpose is shot through her like a bullet piercing flesh. Humanity is pitiful. You want to destroy it all.  </p><p>After all, if you break her now, she can’t leave you. </p><p>And you do. You're ruthless and you're cold and you're beautiful as everything she loves crumbles beneath the swing of your bat.</p><p> </p><p>(13)</p><p>A season and two games later, and you’re free. And you’re more lost than ever before.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>